Press Kit: Discovering the Civil War

Discovering the Civil War

Proclamation from the Pacific

In August 1861 King Kamehameha IV proclaimed that the Hawaiian Islands would remain neutral in the conflict between the United States and "certain States therof styling themselves The Confederate States of America." The King prohibited his subjects from helping either side raid commercial vessels. Since commercial raiding was a key component of the Confederacys naval strategy, that ultimatum affected the South more than it did the North. National Archives, General Records of the Department of State